Friday, April 25, 2008

Ask Coriel: Pursuit of Justice for a Tank?

Jarilo asks:

I was just wondering what you thought about pursuit of justice as a talent for protection paladins running instances and raids. Is it a useful talent? Does it have a noticeable impact on the amount of spell damage the paladin takes? Does it even work for PvE, or is it only worth it for PvP? My husband has a prot pally and we were noticing a bit of difficulty in Magisters Terrace from the large amount of damage done by spellcasters. We're finding conflicting reports from google searches, and wondered if you knew one way or the other?

As far as I know, Pursuit of Justice will work in PvE. Your husband's paladin will take 3% less spell damage overall, which can help in magic-heavy fights. And the speed increase is really nice.

The real problem is where do you take the extra points from? The best idea is probably stealing some points from Anticipation. You'll take a little more physical damage, in order to take a little less spell damage. I'd suggest a build like this: 0/46/15.

Also, if you raid, be careful to stay both uncrittable and uncrushable if you do this. If your defense is too low, and you can't afford to lose points in Anticipation, I'd probably take the points from Precision instead.

well is precision really necessary for a prot paladin? i mean we dont need the hit rating or the spell hit.i was thinking about dropping it and getting pursuit myself. or taking 3 points out of toughness

First off, Light of the Sun, Precision is an absolutely vital talent. Avenger's Shield and Righteous Defense both rely on physical hit. While spell hit isn't as vital, it's also useful. I would rate Precision as one of the more important talents we can get. A resisted Righteous Defense can cause wipes.

As for Pursuit of Justice, I generally find it's a useful talent, as long as your not having issues with threat generation. Both the increased movement speed and the decreased chance to be hit with spells are handy. The movement speed part is very nice because it allows you to make LOS pulls more easily.

In the end, it's value is dependent, primarily, on if you're having trouble surviving. If not, then there are better investments.

Also, for a while I've been using it, and I've done this build: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZVhtIx0dMMqtVct0h

(I have 1/3 in Vindication because if it procs, even if the target is immune it can make JoW or JoL proc)

The benefit for PoJ is that you get increased movement (something Prot pallys can really make use of) and some spell avoidance.

The problem with PoJ is that the avoidance nature of it can cause spikey damage. Just like any boss encounter with binary resist spells, the healers not being prepared for you to take 4-5K damage (or not take) can cause problems.

Often, the +stam/+physical mitigation talents (or spell warding) you give up make better choices for raids.

When my prot pally was mainly doing Kara/Heroics, I just got the Boar's Speed enchant on my boots and stuck with the my fairly 'standard' Prot/Ret MT build (0/49/12). (before Kara I had reckoning fro heroics, but dropped it when I went for the MT role)

However, if the focus is magister's terrace (a 5 man I have 0 experience tanking) then completely avoiding some of the smaller trash/mini boss spells could be nice. I hear MrT can be a bit of a pain for Prot pallys, alas, I may never know.

Personally, I dropped the two points in Improved Judgment, because I found that 8-second judgements don't line up well with 10-second Holy Shield refresh cycles, and I'd cast Judgement/re-seal and be in the global cooldown when Holy Shield came around. I also took only 2/3 in Pursuit of Justice because I wanted full points in Precision, Combat Expertise, and 1H weapon spec.

Avoidance against spells isn't particularly useful for a PvE tank. Unlike physical attacks, spells only come infrequently, so you're not worried about trying to stop one of the five hits in the span of 2 seconds that would render your tank unhealable.

In fact, as a tank, you probably want to suck down that damage rather avoiding it. It's unlikely to be of much danger (most spell attacks will also apply to your raid, and if your Mages/Priests can take that damage, your tank most certainly can), and getting healing for that damage restores mana.

Being the paladin in question, I want to say that I was working with my first prot build which had a lot of other issues beyond PoJ. I had 4 points in reconing, 2 of which I wanted to move to spell warding and the other 2 I didn't know where to put.

The build I came up with is the same one that vlob posted:http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZVhtIx0dMgqtV0x0b

I haven't yet gotten to go back to HMgT, but from the other heroics I've done since I have to say I haven't seen any real change in my overall spell resist percentage. The movement speed increase has been a noticeable benefit though, especially when LOS pulling or running something down on the rare times I have to do it. Spell warding was worth the points, and seems especially useful immediately after a pull were I have multiple casters hitting me simultaneously.

I have considered moving the 2 points from PoJ into Imp. Judgement for increased aggro on bosses/singles and getting boar's speed instead. I don't really have problems holding aggro yet, but have had high-dps people come close. I think the extra threat padding and lower judgment cooldown (for those have-to-hit-it-now situations when RD is down) might be more beneficial in the long run.

I've written a bit about the myth of improved judgment and its effects on actual threat in my blog, but the long and short of it is that like andris said, imp judgment's cycle conflicts too much in boss fights to be worth it. I'd rather have reckoning if threat is an issue, or spell warding for mitigation.

PoJ isn't bad, it's just not reliable enough to count for much. 3% spell avoidance might save you some random time, but it's some random time and it won't help your healers regularly enough to matter. The run speed is only 7% above what boar's speed gives.

It's good; it's just not good enough relative to other talents that prot paladins have access to.

each point of anticipation is .8% avoidance against physical attacks in addition to more block rating (useful for being uncrushable) and -crit (useful for being uncrittable. I'd never think about trading .8% avoidance from physical attacks for 1% avoidance from melee unless my avoidance was really low (avoidance gets better as you have more, so stacking it is better than not).

Precision is one of the better threat talents a prot paladin has - and it helps with resists on taunts. It is, talent point per point, better than improved judgment for threat.

You surely don't need 1 point in bless of king. 5 man group can do it without bless of king. In raid most likely have other healadin to do that job for you. Also does spell warding really need for PVE? Most boss hit with physical damage anyway. And fight like elemental in illidan P2, You will use resist gear for sure. 4% of spell reduction won't bring you to anywhere.

More discuss you can check out tankadin forum.http://www.failsafedesign.com/maintankadin/index.php?sid=2b5451e61e99110939fce8adbbbb3445

Personally I prefer this build.http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZVhxIx0zrgqtV0x0h

As people said already. Improved judgement won't line up well with holy shield. As when holy shield and judgement CD both finish at same time you will want active holy shield first. Even though judgement won't affect GCD. But seal will cost 1.5 sec GCD. That means you will either active holy shield first and lose 1 swing without seal or leave 1.5 sec gap without holy shield to get some crush from boss.

"It's probably easier to do something that's divisible by 8 and 10 for the rotation, given those are the values you're comparing for imp judgment's time up. Lore did a very good 40 second rotation assuming that you must at all times keep up holy shield and that you should put down a consecrate whenever you can; the end result was that with 0 lag, you will lose 4 seconds of SoR while gaining one extra judgment. The cycle is extended for improved judgment with 1 point, where you'll lose only 2 seconds in a 45-second period of time while gaining one judgment; this is why I say that 1 point in imp judgment is better than 2 points on a per-talent point threat scale. "